Newsies the Musical The newsboys strike a pose at the Nederlander Theater. Based on a 1992 Disney movie, this production has a book by Harvey Fierstein and music by Alan Menken.Credit
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

Since our subject today is newspapers and the people who hawk them, I’m going to ask you to try to imagine a special kind of supertabloid. It would consist of nothing but headlines, all set in extra-large type, all goal-posted with exclamation points and all proclaiming essentially the same thing.

Now imagine that tabloid set to music, and you’ve got “Newsies the Musical,” which opened on Thursday night at the Nederlander Theater. This Disney Theatrical Productions adaptation of the 1992 Disney movie musical — itself inspired by the New York newsboy strike of 1899 — is made up largely of numbers that feel like blazing banner headlines. And if none of them quite match the immortal panache of the New York Post classic “Headless Body in Topless Bar,” you have to give their creators points for consistency.

Here are a few titles of the songs by Alan Menken (music) and Jack Feldman (lyrics): “Carrying the Banner,” “The World Will Know,” “Seize the Day,” “Something to Believe In” and “Once and for All.” And if you asked me to explain what distinguishes one of these songs from another, I couldn’t begin to without consulting my notes, my program and possibly the show’s director, Jeff Calhoun, and book writer, Harvey Fierstein.

You see, these are songs that take their cues from the hard-sell tactics of the show’s title characters, feisty lads of the urban jungle who make their living pushing the papes (to borrow their lingo). And if attracting the attention of potential customers requires yelling, pushing and pandering to baser sentimental instincts, well, a boy’s gotta do what a boy’s gotta do.

Like the publishers of successful tabloids throughout history, the team behind “Newsies” knows exactly what it’s selling. And it presents the full range of its merchandise early and brazenly, as Tobin Ost’s multitiered, tenementlike set slides forward, bearing a full cargo of young men in scruffy but picturesque outfits (designed by Jess Goldstein), their faces aglow with defiance and hope.

Yes, what’s being marketed is Urchin Appeal. You remember urchins, right? They’re those plucky, resourceful ragamuffins — preferably orphans — whom America once embraced in movies like the Dead End Kids and Bowery Boys series and musicals like “Oliver!” and “Annie.”

These days urchins have mostly been replaced in popular entertainment by troubled teenage vampires (“Twilight”) and fresh-fleshed human killing machines (“The Hunger Games”). So it’s understandable if there’s a nostalgia for tales of put-upon kids who stood up for themselves without generating double-digit body counts. Prepare for the imminent arrival of more urchins on Broadway in shows like “Peter and the Starcatcher” (a riff on the Lost Boys of J. M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan,” opening next month) and, yes, “Annie,” the 1977 show that gave us the orphan chorus line, planned for revival next season.

But first up is “Newsies,” which makes a bold claim to be the ultimate urchin crowd-pleaser. (The 1992 movie was, for the record, a flop, but it has had an afterlife as a mini-cult favorite among home viewers, and this stage adaptation had a successful run last year at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey.) O.K., maybe most of the actors playing the title characters — newsboys who dare to stand up to corporate power, led by the most charismatic of their tribe, Jack Kelly (the charismatic Jeremy Jordan) — look a wee bit old to qualify as bona fide urchins.

Video

Anatomy of a Number: ‘Newsies’

The choreographer Christopher Gattelli and the actor/dancer Ryan Steele talk about the number "Seize the Day" from the new Broadway musical at the Nederlander Theater.

But that doesn’t stop them from burning energy like toddlers on a sugar high at a birthday party. As choreographed by Christopher Gattelli, they keep coming at us in full-speed-ahead phalanxes, fortified by every step in a Broadway-by-the-numbers dance book. There are back flips, cartwheels, somersaults and kick lines galore, not to mention enough pirouettes to fill a whole season of “Swan Lake.”

Though there is little originality in these dance numbers, they have enough raw vitality to command the attention and even stir the blood. Or they would if they knew when to quit. But just when you think a number is over, it starts up again, and no sooner are you recovering from that one, then there’s another one, with all the same darn back flips, pirouettes, etc. I commend the cast members for always appearing to be excited by what they’re doing. Unfortunately, that is not the same as being exciting.

You could argue that such relentlessness suits the show’s plot, in which newsies learn that in solidarity (and tenacity) there is strength. The enemy they must conquer is the press baron Joseph Pulitzer (John Dossett, looking not all that happy to be there), who decides to cut costs by charging the newsies more for the papers they sell.

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Mobilized by the brawn of the popular Jack and the brains of the more reticent Davey (Ben Fankhauser), the young newsies are initiated into the fine arts of unionizing and business negotiations. Their fold includes the obligatory brave little man with a crutch, named Crutchie (Andrew Keenan-Bolger) and the wisecracking, deadpan child prodigy (played appealingly by Matthew J. Schechter on the night I saw the show).

Also on hand to aid and abet the strikers and encourage the cultural and romantic aspirations of Jack (bet you didn’t know he was an artist in his spare time) is a lovely, high-born but politically fair-minded reporter named Katharine (Kara Lindsay).

There are a few Dickensian villains hanging around, who never look very threatening, and a helpful burlesque queen (Capathia Jenkins). And, oh yes, there’s a deus ex machina named Theodore Roosevelt, portrayed by Kevin Carolan. (You might remember that Theodore’s fifth cousin, Franklin, played a similar role in “Annie.”)

Mr. Jordan, late of the short-lived “Bonnie & Clyde,” is a natural star who has no trouble holding the stage, even without pirouettes. And his John Garfield-ish face alone summons memories of the heyday of Hollywood urchin fare.

Aglow with feminine competence, Ms. Lindsay looks as if she came from a later era and genre — perhaps the Disney costume movies of the early 1960s — but she sings agreeably and convincingly pretends that we haven’t met her character a few hundred times before.

She also has the show’s best and most atypical song. It’s called “Watch What Happens,” and it is about, of all things, writer’s block, and trying to find the words to capture momentous events. Mr. Feldman’s lyrics are spot-on, while the melody reminds us just how charming a composer Mr. Menken (who did “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Little Mermaid” for Disney) can be. It also provides a sorely needed oasis of relief from all that extra! extra! enthusiasm.

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